Ross Chastain reflects on year-over-year changes at Nashville

Ross Chastain, driving for now-defunct Chip Ganassi Racing at the time, enjoyed his best weekend of the season last year with a runner-up finish at Nashville Superspeedway.

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It was a nice story at the time, but one that didn’t impact the season at large or even the future of that franchise.

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CGR announced the sale of its assets to Chastain’s current team not even two weeks later

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He had just one top-five the rest of the way; he missed the playoffs and finished 20th in the standings.

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“My world is pretty much opposite just from where I was at this point last year in life and my career to the performance we’ve put together this entire season

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where we finished second and it was the greatest thing to happen to us all year,” Chastain said after picking up his eighth top five of the season in Sunday’s Ally 400.

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That number more than doubles his career total from before the season, and he’s done it in just 17 races.

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“12-year-old Ross is like ‘What? You could be leading the Cup Series points standings straight up in a few weeks or at any point?’ That’s wild,”

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“Go fast, acquire points and it all kind of works itself out. … but yeah, little kid Ross is like ‘What in the world? This can’t be real.’

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“But you just play your best hand and Phil Surgen and our group will go to bed very well tonight knowing we made a good call to win the race. It just didn’t quite work out.”

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